Friday, December 9, 2011

The Wounded Man

Last night during my son's daily wolf molestation (I apologize to those of you who are lost at this point) he hurt his foot. He wouldn't stand on it all night. Even this morning we couldn't bribe him across the room to some chocolate. But after a few tentative steps and wounded-paw behavior I got him to run at me. I lay on the ground with my carpet-soccer plush ball in my mouth. That boy could not get across the room fast enough to bite it out of mouth and run off cackling.

So he seems okay I guess. Since charging at me like a bull to a red rag he's not holding his weight off his foot at all. We played some marbles on the floor and then some Mancala. Whatever that is - my daughter picked it up at a thrift store because it had shiny stones in it back when her inner-Magpie compelled her to buy shiny stuff. Anyway he ran around giddy to be allowed near swallow-able items like that and seems to have forgotten his foot hurt.

And it did hurt originally. When he first did it I saw him collapse onto his wolf out the corner of my eye. Then he didn't get up and started crying. Not a pain-cry though. Any parent (or sadistic lunatic) knows the difference between crying types. He tried standing up but couldn't. Then his crying got more frustrated but it never got to a pitch and frequency that indicated any kind of unbearable pain. But I picked him up and set him on his feet and he collapsed sideways. That's when I knew his leg wasn't working. So I picked him and looked it over for weird bends or obvious stab wounds. Nothing. I was holding him awkwardly at first so thought his leg was all floppy initially and thought the worst. Nope - he's just that age where kids still have all those weird folds in their skin from when they had eight joints in their limbs. His foot was a bit red but nothing obvious. But I know other people with kids who have broken/fractured stuff and they didn't know either.

But it's a moot point. Right now he's chasing his sister to pick up shiny rocks. The both of them are sensitive little buggers this morning (maybe more on that later) so I'm going to go sit and play with them.